Early this year, Apple ran an ad that featured a young girl using an iPad as her primary computing device. An older woman asked the girl a question about her computer, and she responded, "What's a computer?"

The ad was widely mocked. For starters, an iPad is a computer. But also, the hypothetical future when kids don't even know what a desktop or laptop are seems very distant at best. Yes, tablets and smartphones have replaced laptops and desktops among large numbers of young people for personal uses like social media, Web browsing, and games. But despite some high school students who sometimes write their papers on their smartphones, mobile devices are still not where the real work gets done. Real work is done on a laptop or desktop.

But now Apple has released an iPad Pro that it has very explicitly positioned as a, uh, computer for doing that real work. Really. Apple's "Why iPad Pro" page says, "Here are a few reasons why your next computer just might be iPad Pro."

Further Reading

After using 2018's new 12.9-inch iPad Pro for a week, I almost find myself wondering just what a computer is, too. This device breaks a lot of rules and challenges some preconceptions about what a real productivity machine looks like—especially for creative work.

But the 2018 iPad Pro is both awe-inspiring and deeply disappointing. It offers performance unlike anything we've seen before in a mobile device. Its Pencil accessory is a truly powerful art tool. And a select few robust applications like Photoshop and AutoCAD are making their way to the platform, challenging assumptions that a tablet should be a stripped-down, pinch hitting experience.

But it became obvious within a day of use that iOS, otherwise an excellent operating system for phones, is still not designed with that kind of real work in mind. Limitations with how the new USB-C port can be used ultimately undermine the pitch that this tablet is a real workhorse.

The new iPad Pro tries to redefine computing, but in many ways, it feels like a tech demo for that redefinition, not the final product. Despite an incredible leap forward in performance, the software seems to be lagging just a bit behind.

Apple iPad Pro (2018)

We'll dig in on the silicon (possibly the most exciting thing about this device) in a moment. First, let's get some other specs out of the way.

Starting at $799 but ranging up to $1,899, new iPad Pro comes in two sizes: 11 inches, and 12.9 inches. The 11-inch unit measures at 9.74 x 7.02 x 0.23 inches (247.6 x 178.5 x 5.9mm), and the 12.9-inch one at 11.04 x 8.46 x 0.23 inches (280.6 x 214.9 x 5.9mm). Apart from size and screen resolution, technical specifications for both are identical. Both come in configurations with or without LTE support. The smaller one weighs 1.03 pounds (468g) and the larger one weighs 1.4 pounds (633g) for the LTE model or 1.39 pounds (631g) for the Wi-Fi only model.

You can configure them with 64GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of flash storage. Oddly, developers using the devices have discovered there are two different RAM configurations, and they're not advertised. The 1TB configuration appears to come with 6GB of RAM, but the others come with 4GB—the same as last year's iPad Pro, and this year's iPhone XS or XS Max. Our 1TB review unit has 6GB of RAM. Apple likely bumped up the RAM on the 1TB configuration because users who need 1TB of flash storage need it to, for example, open massive Adobe Photoshop files. More RAM would help that run smoothly. (A full-featured Photoshop is coming to the iPad Pro next year.)

Both units have a number of sensors used for various features: an accelerometer, a barometer, an ambient light sensor, and a three-axis gyro.

The 11-inch model has a 29.37-watt-hour battery, the 12.9-inch one has a 36.71 watt-hour battery. Apple promises the same battery life in these models as in last year's: 10 hours of Web browsing over Wi-Fi or consuming music or video content.

The A12X

The star of the show is Apple's custom system-on-a-chip, the A12X. It follows the A12 in 2018 iPhones and the A10X in 2017 iPad Pros, which were both already the best in their respective product categories.

The A12X is the first tablet SoC manufactured in a 7nm process. That means it offers better performance while using less power and taking up less space. It houses a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), an image signal processor (ISP), a neural processing unit (NPU) Apple calls the Neural Engine, a storage controller, an integrated memory controller, and more.

The CPU has eight cores—four high-performance, and four high-efficiency. Unlike with prior iPad Pros, all the cores can be engaged simultaneously when needed. Apple says the A12X's single-core CPU performance is up to 35 percent faster than the A10X in last year's iPad Pro and that multi-core CPU performance is up to 90 percent faster. The company hasn't been forthcoming with many technical details about the architecture, but a recent deep dive at Anandtech with its iPhone counterpart, the A12, suggested that increased cache sizes might be part of the equation.

Apple also claims nearly double the graphics performance of last year's iPad Pro thanks to improvements to its GPU in the A12X. Thanks to the 7nm process, Apple managed to squeeze another core in to the GPU, bringing the total to seven.

We ran benchmarks to verify these claims and found them to be largely true, which puts the iPad Pro in spitting distance from some of the most powerful workstation laptops, including most recent MacBook Pro models.

The other development of note here is that the Neural Engine has come to the iPad for the first time. The first iteration of Apple's machine learning silicon was introduced in the A11 SoC in the iPhone X, and a second generation arrived in the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR earlier this fall. Whereas the A11's Neural Engine could handle 600 billion operations per second, the A12 and A12X can handle 5 trillion. The Neural Engine helps with Apple's computational photography features, Siri, search, palm rejection when using the Apple Pencil, Face ID, augmented reality, and more.

The A12X is the most interesting thing about the iPad Pro, so we went into considerably more detail in a related article—that piece also includes our interview with representatives at Apple about the company's in-house silicon strategy.

USB-C

There is only one port on the iPad Pro, but in a big shift from Apple's previous iOS device strategy, it's USB-C, not the proprietary Lightning connection. This is a very welcome change, and it brings many advantages. At first glance, it looks like we're headed for the dongle-free (or at least dongle-lite) utopia we've long dreamed of. USB-C means external 5K display support, support for a wider range of headphones, USB-C charger support, and more accessory support in general—at least in theory. It even means you can charge devices like your iPhone, an Android phone, or even a Nintendo Switch from your iPad Pro.

Further Reading

First and foremost, iOS does not offer file system access for external drives over USB-C. Frankly, that's ridiculous. Yes, apps can access files on external drives under certain conditions if they've been specifically built to do so, but that's not enough. No device that calls itself "Pro" should ship without this basic capability. Apple has for a while offered a "Files" app for browsing file systems, but it doesn't work for this.

It's a similar situation with external displays. Yes, there is OS-wide support for mirroring the iPad Pro's native resolution on external displays. But extending to a display instead of mirroring requires app developers to specifically implement support for that. I've no doubt that very popular and high-profile pro apps will do just that, but this should be built right into the operating system like it is on, say, a MacBook Pro.

Oh, and the (oddly short) USB-C cable that comes in the box? It's USB 2.0, so you need to buy an additional cable to do a lot of this.

On paper, it looks really exciting that the iPad Pro now uses USB-C, and it is. Like I said, it's better than the previous state of affairs. But it does not bring all the promise pro users projected when they first read rumors this was coming. I'm quite certain these are all limitations in iOS, not in the hardware. Apple could fix this, and maybe it will in next year's major iOS release. But until then, USB-C feels half implemented—at least when it comes to pro and power users' specific needs.

That's very disappointing. The applications of USB-C here are sufficient for a consumer device like an iPhone, but the iPad Pro carries the pretense of being for professionals, who need these capabilities. If Apple had implemented this the way this product's target users wanted, I would have spent half this review joyously sharing all the nifty, powerful new things you can now do with an iPad. Sadly, these limitations mean there's not much more to say for now.

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Samuel Axon
Based in Los Angeles, Samuel is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he covers Apple products, display technology, internal PC hardware, and more. He is a reformed media executive who has been writing about technology for 10 years at Ars Technica, Engadget, Mashable, PC World, and many others. Emailsamuel.axon@arstechnica.com//Twitter@SamuelAxon

356 Reader Comments

"The Ugly: iOS still isn’t designed to support using an iPad as a true laptop replacement"

I disagree with this criticism. iPad isn't designed to be a laptop replacement because it's not intended to be a laptop replacement. There are in fact many products the iPad is not intended to replace. None of that makes it any less valuable as the world's best tablet computer.

This is true of the basic iPad. But I believe the iPad Pro is meant to be a laptop replacement for many people. In my view, this criticism is fair, for now. Once the Adobe apps are here along with Apple's, not so much.

Except that Apple clearly positions it as a laptop replacement for creatives in its marketing materials. So I’m just judging it on what they say they intend it to be. And I did say it’s great for tablet-y things!

"But despite some high school students who sometimes write their college papers on their smartphones, mobile devices are still not where the real work gets done. Real work is done on a laptop or desktop."

One more time...

"But despite some high school students who sometimes write their college papers on their smartphones, mobile devices are still not where the real work gets done. Real work is done on a laptop or desktop."

But.... there is no way iOS is even close to being my next laptop OS. I could hardly do anything that I actually do with my current laptop.

- Open and save files on a WebDAV or SMB volume- Write or run Applescripts, Javascript, Python scripts, shell scripts- Open files off USB keys people hand me- Organize files- Use Adobe Illustrator- Use an external display to get enough screen real estate for multi-tasking or using Photoshop or Illustrator with my tools expanded

That's just in a few seconds of thinking about it, I'm sure the list could go on and on.

Years ago, like many people, I thought iOS and MacOS would merge. I didn't think Apple would do it in a "Windows 10" single-UI-everyone-hates way, I thought there'd just be one OS that would know what device it was running on and what peripherals were available and provide an appropriate interface regardless. Big touchy buttons when it's by itself, MacOS-like UI when it's got a keyboard and mouse or trackpad attached. But I guess not.

Rumor is that they're switching from Intel to their own ARM chips for future Macbooks. The performance of this iPad sure makes that sound like a compelling option. But I agree that iOS is nice for phones, but not remotely capable of the flexibility required for most professionals to do work. It's not like it's missing a couple of things - it's missing capabilities required for most tasks I perform.

Yeah, the lack of mouse support is pretty bad. A giant 13" display. That is laptop replacement territory. Having to bring up the virtual keyboard when you have a physical keyboard just to utilize force touch to edit a text field with a virtual cursor. Why not support a small touchpad? That is where the Microsoft Surface is far superior. Even if you primarily navigate via touch, you can still get an honest to god cursor with the keyboard cover.

Apple also has all the prerequisites in place. Force touch support giving a virtual mouse to move the cursor. Great, just add a tiny touch pad to the keyboard cover that replicates this functionality. Don't need to support an external mouse.

I tried ditching my Netbook with an iPad Pro and the one big thing that kept taking me back to the Netbook? Freedom to install what I want (such as extensions for Firefox) along with choosing the OS I want and not being tied to some app store.

"The Ugly: iOS still isn’t designed to support using an iPad as a true laptop replacement"

I disagree with this criticism. iPad isn't designed to be a laptop replacement because it's not intended to be a laptop replacement. There are in fact many products the iPad is not intended to replace. None of that makes it any less valuable as the world's best tablet computer.

I'm going to disagree with your disagreement. During their presentation they stressed about how the new ipad was more powerful than 90% of the laptops sold in the last year and how it's the most popular computer (not just tablet) versus other notebook sales.

The price is huge for a tablet, at least they could've put MacOS in there otherwise its just an overpriced iPad. It can never get close to a real computer without a real OS, plus for that price you can get much better laptop with better hardware nothing beats X86 if you want a real computer.

The price is huge for a tablet, at least they could've put MacOS in there otherwise its just an overpriced iPad. It can never get close to a real computer without a real OS, plus for that price you can get much better laptop with better hardware nothing beats X86 if you want a real computer.

Gee, if only someone made real computers with x86 hardware and macOS...

I tried ditching my Netbook with an iPad Pro and the one big thing that kept taking me back to the Netbook? Freedom to install what I want (such as extensions for Firefox) along with choosing the OS I want and not being tied to some app store.

Freedom to install anything you want? What a crazy idea! But wouldn't you feel safer under the protection of a company that tells you what you can and cannot do? It's really for your own good.

The price is huge for a tablet, at least they could've put MacOS in there otherwise its just an overpriced iPad. It can never get close to a real computer without a real OS, plus for that price you can get much better laptop with better hardware nothing beats X86 if you want a real computer.

The goal is to sandbox you - putting MacOS on an iPad gives users too much freedom and threaten the lucrative App Store revenues.

The price is huge for a tablet, at least they could've put MacOS in there otherwise its just an overpriced iPad. It can never get close to a real computer without a real OS, plus for that price you can get much better laptop with better hardware nothing beats X86 if you want a real computer.

The goal is to sandbox you - putting MacOS on an iPad gives users too much freedom and threaten the lucrative App Store revenues.

Oh, and the (oddly short) USB-C cable that comes in the box? It's USB 2.0, so you need to buy an additional cable to do a lot of this.

That is pretty damn lame. A usb 3.0 cable would have added what $0.50 in cost at the volume apple works at. For a $1800 device that is weak sauce.

The fact that USB-IF just didn't mandate all usb-c cables are usb 3 (and 100W) is annoying as hell (there are about a dozen different usb-c cable types). Still that is usb-if, the same guys who came up with usb 3.1 gen 1 as a naming convention so I get them making things overly complex but apple?

I bought the 2nd generation iPad Pro hoping to replace my aging MBA. What the review didn’t look at was compatibility of web apps. For all of the desktop-like performance of the device, your experience in iOS browsers won’t be the same.

I depend on version history in Google Docs, but that isn’t available in mobile browsers - iOS or Android.

The Evernote web clipper in iOS only lets you capture an entire page and add keywords. In iOS you don’t get the selection or bookmarking functions. You can’t add new keywords either.

Services like Upwork detect iOS and present their very limited mobile experience. You can request a desktop version, but it barely works.

I still have my Pro and love it for personal use. Even then, the awkward file handling makes working with photos a hassle.

Given the high price and resulting low volumes, I’m not sure creating a desktop-like experience for iPad Pros will ever be worthwhile.

Oh, and the (oddly short) USB-C cable that comes in the box? It's USB 2.0, so you need to buy an additional cable to do a lot of this.

That is pretty damn lame. A usb 3.0 cable would have added what $0.50 in cost at the volume apple works at. For a $1800 device that is weak sauce.

The fact that USB-IF just didn't mandate all usb-c cables are usb 3 (and 100W) is annoying but it is usb-if the same guys who came up with usb 3.1 gen 1 so I get them making things overly complex but apple?

They nickel & dime their customers.....I just spent 1200 on an iPhone XS Max 256gb & they couldn't be bothered to put a headphone adapter in in the box ?...just comes across as sleazy

No device that calls itself "Pro" should ship without this basic capability. Apple has for a while offered a "Files" app for browsing file systems, but it doesn't work for this.

Give me this, SMB/CIFS access out of the box (no, installing a third party sandboxed app is not good enough) and the ability to change the default apps to ones which better suit my requirements/workflow and then I might consider this "pro".

I wouldn't expect those limitations on a £399 netbook, let alone something which costs twice as much.

The thing is that the iPad being held back by iOS is true for all iPads and has been true for quite some years now. There's very little you can do with these iPad Pro's you couldn't also do with a cheap 9,7" iPad and (apart from the size and pencil support) even any iPhone. The OS is the same on all of them and while the iPad just looks and feels as if it could do so much more, it just doesn't.

I've tried numerous times to use my iPad for real work, since I think it's just a great device. But over and over I felt like throwing it at the wall after one hour. There are so many things that you can't do or do only with much more effort. Apple just needs to sit down, listen to the users and implement all those small things that you just NEED if you want to use an iPad as the universal tool a computer is.

This will not be easy, but some basic things (like full access to external drives, or mouse/trackpad support) really aren't rocket science. I mean, I can understand that adding touch support to something like macOS is hard for many reasons, but what's so hard about moving around a cursor on the screen with a trackpad and being able to "tap" with a click? Just make the pointer resemble a half-transparent fingerprint that fades out after a few seconds if you stop moving it if you care for the aesthetics.

And yes, the 12.9" (or even the 11") Pro with a real keyboard and trackpad and running a real OS (sorry) would be in many ways a nicer and better computer than the MacBook Pro or Air.

As a laptop replacement for my use these things would need to be added to the iPad Pros at a minimum;

- Two USB-C ports; (Thunderbolt would be better but let’s start with USB-C).- Apple Pencil for fine control of the entire UI.Also, trackpad support using the Apple Pencil as a mouse substitute. - Multi floating window support in iOS. Rigid split screen multitasking or one floating window is not enough. The split screen limitation of iOS makes even managing email more difficult compared with the Mac. - File management needs to be as easy to use as on a Mac. - Data storage through USB-C needs to be easier more like a Mac.

Similar conclusion to the author. I bought an iPad last year. I never use it because it's so laborious to do anything useful. Brilliant for content consumption, awful for anything that requires precision or integrating multiple sources.

I like MacOS. I like my rigid clamshell with touchpad and keyboard. Just give me this chip in that, please.

"Support for wider range of headphones" is the all-time dumbest take on USB-C, bar none.

I don't see how you could dispute that it's a hell of a lot better than Lightning.

Have you actually tried usb-c headphones? I wouldn't say it is better than lightning. It is pretty anemic selection plus there are two incompatible ways to do it (analog audio over usb-c or sending digital audio out to a da) which is just loads of fun.

Pretty much everyone is just going to use an adapter. So if you have a mac, ipad pro, and iphone you buy a 3.5mm headphone plus two different adapters.

That hardware is drool worthy gorgeous, except for the absurd camera bump. Make it thicker. Use multiple smaller cameras to make a conglomerate image (innovation!). Ditch it entirely in the name of courage, security and basic human decency.

Not something that makes my surface pro worried about being replaced, but it sure does have a sleekness that the SP looks like it's aiming for but hasn't reached.

Edit: do arsians really like the camera bump or something? Sheesh, this is twice I've gotten massively down voted talking about the iPads bump.